Today is the day! The new book from Lou Brutus “Sonic Warrior: My Life as a Rock n Roll Reprobate” is available now! We’ve got a few signed copies to give away, which we’ll be doing all week, but if you can’t wait, feel free to grab one from the publisher here.
On to other music news…
Linkin Park is among the 10 most streamed musical acts on YouTube, according to Chart Data. The band came in at Number Nine on the list, which is based on views generated by “official videos” and “features” on the Google-owned video site. Also appearing the chart are Maroon 5, BTS, Coldplay and Imagine Dragons, among others.
Linkin Park’s YouTube channel boasts nearly 16 million subscribers, and the highest-viewed video on the channel is the official clip for “Numb,” which has been seen 1.3 billion times.
Following the death of lead singer Chester Bennington in July 2017, fans of the group launched an unofficial campaign to get the “Numb” video to the one billion milestone, a mission that was completed in November 2018.
Linkin Park DJ Joe Hahn told us a while back that the Internet has been a valuable tool for the band since the beginning: “The thing is, we actually started off on the Internet before we were signed. You know, we’d go into chat rooms and, you know, tell people to check out our music. ‘If you like this kind of music, check this out, and just give us feedback whether you like it or not.’ And that kind of sparked interest to the point where we created a street team, and then we started our website and kind of kept in touch with the fans.”
Linkin Park has not performed together in public since October 2017, when the surviving members staged a tribute concert in Los Angeles to Bennington. The band has not, to date, officially announced whether it intends to carry on following the death of Bennington, who committed suicide at the age of 41.
Godsmack frontman Sully Erna will launch a new twice-weekly Internet show, called “Hometown Sessions,” starting today at 6:00 p.m. via his YouTube channel.
According to Erna, the Tuesday edition of the show will feature “celebrity guests, musician friends” and music-related conversation, along with occasional performances, while Thursdays will be reserved for “real talk” about “real life,” with experts discussing mental health, addiction, depression and other topics.
Erna announced the show launch in a social media post, writing, “Yes, I have finally gone covid crazy! So If you’ve been looking to hang out with someone besides your parents, here’s your chance. My new show ‘Hometown Sessions’ will premiere this tues at 6pm from my very own home only on www.YouTube.com/SullyErna.”
Erna added about the Thursday segments, “We will even be opening the phone lines to all of you to help answer your questions, share advice, or simply hear your heartfelt stories that will inspire others to come forward and tell theirs.”
Godsmack has been off the road since the coronavirus pandemic shut the touring industry down, but has been working on material for the follow-up to its last album, When Legends Rise.
This one hits hard… Dr. Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel, a special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization, told the New York Times that he doesn’t anticipate it to be safe to return to concerts, sporting events and other mass public gatherings for another 18 months.
While musical acts have postponed tours and other events to later this year or early 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Emanuel predicted “fall 2021 at the earliest” for people to return to such events.
He explained, “Restarting the economy has to be done in stages, and it does have to start with more physical distancing at a work site that allows people who are at lower risk to come back. Certain kinds of construction, or manufacturing or offices, in which you can maintain six-foot distances are more reasonable to start sooner.”
Emanuel continued, “Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility. I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.”
Emanuel pointed out that there have been resurgences of the coronavirus in cities like Hong Kong and Singapore that have begun opening up and allowing more activity again. He called for “better testing and contact tracing” in such situations.
Meanwhile, in a move both apparently tone deaf and predatory, the nation’s largest ticket seller, Ticketmaster, has changed its policy in the wake of numerous canceled and rescheduled events.
Whereas Ticketmaster had previously allowed refunds for events that were “postponed, rescheduled or canceled,” it is currently giving out refunds only “if your event is canceled.”
With many artists opting to postpone or reschedule tours, sometimes to yet-to-be-determined dates, this essentially means obtaining a cash refund is impossible for quite some time even as the public faces financial struggles on a vast scale. A backlash has been building against Ticketmaster as a result.
Bush has set July 17th as the release date for its new album, The Kingdom. Although the LP had originally been slated for a May release, frontman Gavin Rossdale later said that a spring arrival for the record was not set in stone.
Asked by Tucson’s KFMA-FM if the band’s eighth studio LP will be musically similar to the recently released single, “Flowers On A Grave,” Rossdale remarked, “It’s just really heavy and wide and just of the time. It’s really of the time — that’s what I like about it. It feels really necessary — a necessary record. The band’s on fire. It’s just exciting.”
Rossdale told us a while back that he thinks Bush’s “pop” reputation back in the ’90s was unwarranted: “It was only when I went back that I was shocked, you know, by two things. First of all, I thought it was really good, and I was really proud of it. And, you know, this idea that we were, you know, had this sort of pure pop element where . . . there was melodic elements, but some of the stuff was pretty hard.”
Bush is supposed to head out on a massive summer trek as guests of Breaking Benjamin, with Theory Of A Deadman, Saint Asonia and country/rock crossover artist Cory Marks all along for the ride. The fate of the tour, scheduled to begin on July 15th in Bristow, Virginia, depends on what happens with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two years. Heard it here first. Mark it.
— Maynard J Keenan (@mjkeenan) January 18, 2020
Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan has revealed that he plans to market a coffee roast from his winery, Caduceus Cellars. Keenan first hinted at the venture back in January while answering a fan inquiry, saying that the Arizona-based company will launch a signature roast by 2022.
The fan had remarked, “If Maynard really wants to take over the world, he’ll start selling Caduceus gourmet coffee,” to which Keenan responded, “Two years. Heard it here first. Mark it.” In a follow-up message, Keenan added, “As in roasting. Not just bagging,” he said.
In a separate response, Caduceus itself pointed out that Keenan’s other band, Puscifer, has its own branded coffee. Colorado company Novo Coffee are the roasters behind the Puscifer Whole Bean Coffee, which came in four different blends when it was first released.
Keenan has been making wine in the Sedona area for years and told us a while back that the endgame was a self-sustaining community: “What we’re trying to do is re-educate people in a way to show them, look, if we can somehow as a culture catch up with where we came from, with small communities, with a cornerstone of a vineyard and a winemaking community, it’s almost like that’s the catalyst. It’s just the cornerstone. And then you start to remember how you can grow your own food and you don’t have to panic about any of this stuff.”
Tool unleashed Fear Inocolum, its first album in 13 years, last August. The band recently postponed its spring 2020 tour over safety concerns regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong‘s latest entry in his “No Fun Mondays” series of cover song performances is from the Avengers — not the Marvel superhero team, but a legendary Bay Area punk group. Armstrong covered their track “Corpus Christi,” writing, “This is one of my all time favorite songs by the legendary San Francisco band the Avengers.”
Metallica also continues its #MetallicaMondays series of live shows with a full upload of the band’s August 12th, 2017 performance at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. The stream went live at 8:00 p.m. ET on Monday (April 13th). The 18-song set, Metallica’s third headlining appearance at the fest, is the band’s first stream of an American show in the series after previous ones from Denmark, France and Ireland.
That’s a wrap! Everyone buy Lou’s new book!
